


Mirror, Mirror, on the wall...

by gingerpunches



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Elisabeth and Jonathan were never together, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Human Geoffrey McCullum, Jonathan is a smartass, M/M, Pacifist Route, Post Game, Starved Jonathan, That's right you heard me, also vampires dont need to kill to drink blood, bc they're both hella gay, elisabeth and bridget are a thing fight me, for now, its just generally what happens when they cant control themselves, pacifist Jonathan, starts out gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2019-10-06 08:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17341682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerpunches/pseuds/gingerpunches
Summary: ... who's the purest of them all?(London heals. A debt turns into respect. An unlikely friendship turns into something more complicated than the transformation of human into Ekon. Geoffrey wonders just where the hell he went wrong to make that last part even feasible without realizing.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i'm kind of disappointed this game had to rush the ending because there were a lot of unanswered questions, so this fic aims to sort out my own answers for them. otherwise i really enjoyed this game and these characters, and overall this fic will be kind of long because i'm trying to exercise my long form writing and fic planning. any errors are mine as i have no beta, so please let me know what you think and of any errors.

They return to London two weeks after the death of William Marshall.

Elisabeth had been reluctant, still mired in her grief and guilt as she was. Killing her father had broken something inside her - a resolve that had always been there that Jonathan can no longer see. She is so many centuries older than him and now he can truly see it in her, that pain and heartbreak. The weight of mankind resting on an immortal too compassionate not to care.

But she agrees. She burns everything but some precious paintings and tomes, history being eaten up in flames in just a matter of minutes when it’s all said and done. William Marshall’s body disintegrates into ash along with everything else she held dear, and when the deed is done, she is left with only a single box of belongings. 

One box to describe all that she had been. One box to illuminate the history of William Marshall and his miraculous tales of sacrifice and torture. If he hadn’t been there to see him first hand, Jonathan isn’t sure he’d believe any written word Elisabeth had chosen to keep that day. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, anyway. 

London is much the same as they had left it weeks ago, still cold and crowded and sick and dreary. The epidemic has ebbed - hospitals are less crowded and the streets are more lively with chattering couples walking to see films and families returning from dinner and school and work. Priwen patrols seemed to have disappeared, and in their place are police checkpoints and signs pointing to dispensaries for prescription pickups and follow-up appointments for those that had contracted the flu during the epidemic. 

All in all, London seems…  _ normal _ . Albeit a little dirty and tense from all those weeks spent terrified of what could be lurking in the night, but healing and lively all the same. Coming together as a community, looking after each other as they should in the absence of authority that should have done it for them. 

He’s proud of them. He really is. 

The areas surrounding Pembroke are less lively as they approach the hospital, the evening groups thinning to just the one or two passerby. Elisabeth grows visibly uneasy as the bridge from the West End connecting to Whitechapel becomes visible, and Jonathan, tuned to her fluttering heartbeat by now, turns to acknowledge her as he mouth twists into a frown when she speaks.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Jonathan grimaces.  _ No, this isn’t a good idea _ , he wants to say.  _ This is awful. We were safer back in your crypt with the body of your dead father on the floor. _ At least there, Priwen isn’t swarming around London like an especially nasty plague hellbent on eradicating all that they are. All that they have tried to fight against to be better than what they’re perceived to be.

He clears his throat, trying to hide his expression in the collar of his coat. “It’s the only idea that doesn’t include starving in the wilds of Scotland,” Jonathan says. A truth, sure. But not a straight answer.

Elisabeth, to her credit, doesn’t laugh at him. She does, however, smirk and roll her eyes, all traces of her previous reservations gone. “If I remember correctly, you still haven’t eaten from anyone that was alive or healthy. You actually used it as an argument to get me to come here.”

“It worked, right?”

“Yes,” Elisabeth laughs. The sound is like bells in the quiet evening, and despite the eerily empty streets, it makes Jonathan smile. 

Despite her hesitations, Elisabeth follows him to Pembroke. They encounter very little human life, and the Ekons they find along the way flee as soon as they’re seen. Not in any one direction, but they seem to avoid crossing the river to Pembroke and Whitechapel, as if they’re hesitant to escape the cleaner, quieter West End. Also not overly unusual, but the citizens in West End aren’t too easy to hunt, so there could be only one reason they’re all hanging around prey too smart to bait them. 

Jonathan avoids thinking about it. He’s done and over with the Ascalon club now, no matter what mischievous activities they may be up to here. 

The red walls of the Pembroke peek over the outlying buildings around it as they cross the bridge from the West End, an imposing building in profile against the haze of light pollution against the low clouds clinging to London. Old and Gothic it may be, but Jonathan calls it home, and as they venture closer, the quicker his undead heart flutters in his chest. 

Pembroke.  _ Home _ . Edgar Swansea, Pippa Hawkins, Gwyneth Branagan, and so many more - his colleagues and his friends. People who protected him, and whom he protected - people who worked so hard to support not only himself, but each other and the community during the epidemic. Walking under that iron wrought archway sets his skin alight, and seeing the clean plaza, empty of tents and coughing patients, sets his heart racing even faster. 

The doors of the hospital are, for once, closed, but not locked. Jonathan opens them and allows Elisabeth in before him, the both of them sniffing the air for blood and pathogens like cautious animals entering a new home for the first time. But instead of the stink of death that usually accompanies the foyer of the Pembroke, the smell of cleaning alcohol and antiseptic smacks Jonathan in the face instead, along with the pleasant, sharp tang of women’s perfume. 

Pippa stands behind the admittance counter, and when the door closes behind Jonathan, she snaps her attention to them with wide eyes. Her face brightens with a smile, and before either Elisabeth or Jonathan can get a word out, she’s across the room and hugging them both with more enthusiasm than Jonathan has ever seen from her.

“You’re alive!” she exclaims. Jonathan wants to laugh - they’re not - but Pippa continues before that dark thought can settle any deeper. “Doctor Swansea has been so worried for you both - you disappeared after that night he came shambling in looking like the losing end of a betting ring. But you both…”

_ … Look just the same _ hangs in the air between them. But Pippa doesn’t know the half of the weight those words carry, and moves on to looking them over like any good nurse of Pembroke does. She smooths Jonathan’s lapels and dotes over Elisabeth’s pale complexion before wringing her hands in front of her, looking more worried than she had during the epidemic. 

Jonathan has missed that worry. Being out there in the rolling Scottish hills has instilled in him an even stronger need to protect these people, this ragtag group of earnest, dedicated people that took him in when he had nowhere else to go. 

He reaches out to her and brings her back against him, appreciating the warmth that bleeds from her body to his and the affection that comes along with it. They weren’t on this physical level before - were barely friends at all before his leave - but seeing her still here, worried for them, when before all she wanted to do was flee means so much more than his own return to this old building he loves. 

“We are back,” he says quietly. She pats his chest and steps away, turning her face to possibly hide tears. He pretends not to see, turning his gaze upward, searching for a familiar heartbeat in the office above. He finds it, along with many familiar and unfamiliar ones. It gives Pippa time to recover, and when she turns back to them, her eyes only a little wet and red-rimmed, he knows he is home. 

“Let me show you to your rooms,” Pippa says after a moment, all poise and grace now. Jonathan gestures for her to lead the way, and with Elisabeth on his heels, Pippa leads them up the stairs and to his office at the end of the West wing. Edgar is asleep, his heartbeat slow and even behind his office door, so Jonathan does not ask after him when Pippa opens the door to his own rooms when they arrive. 

“We left it how it was,” Pippa says as they step inside. She’s right - except for the balcony Jonathan used to enter the hospital discreetly. It’s boarded up with a proper door now, and all the windows have proper blackout curtains pulled closed despite the late hour. Courtesy of Edgar no doubt, and when Jonathan runs his hands across the nearby bookshelf separating the office half of his rooms from his testing tables, his hand comes back clean. 

“Thank you,” he says sincerely.  _ This hospital, this room _ \- “Just… thank you.”

Pippa dips her chin, hiding a smile. “Of course, Doctor. We knew… We knew you’d be back.”

She leaves them then, ducking away as if to hide from her own admission. The door clicks shut behind her, leaving Elisabeth to circle around Jonathan with the biggest grin on her face he’s ever seen. 

“What?” he asks. 

She shrugs. She spins around, taking in his office for the first time. The cluttered desks and bookshelves filled with medical journals and Latin texts, the ordered chaos of his medical tools and Lisa tucked away in the corner, her leaves broad and green next to a small window left open for her. Jonathan follows Elisabeth as she circles back around to his meager wardrobe shoved against the wall at the foot of his bed. She smiles, half a millennia of sadness weighing in those eyes as she looks at him with a fondness only a mentor could feel. 

“I want to thank you,” she says. Jonathan raises a brow, a question on his lips that she stops him from asking with one delicate hand raised. “Not just for me. But… for these people. What they do, they represent. You told me back in Scotland that you haven’t taken a single life for your hunger, and now I see that that hard work has truly paid off in the end.”

Jonathan can’t stop the scoff that escapes him. “I… I didn’t do it for me, Elisabeth. I didn’t do it for what they could give me. I did it because they’re  _ people _ , like you and I. Just… more frail.”

She smiles wider, this time with something like regret in her eyes. “I knew you would never be a good Ekon. Always turning your back on the danger to lift the hand of the poor, you poor mortal heart, you.”

“Guilty as charged, my Lady.”

She laughs and shakes her head. “Alright, Doctor Reid. I should take my leave and let you rest. I’m sure Nurse Hawkins has already roused the staff to your presence.”

He can hear their heartbeats gathering downstairs, familiar tempos he never knew he would miss. And while he wants to greet them all in the warm fashion they deserve, he knows Elisabeth is fleeing him out of guilt.

He approaches her cautiously, his hands at his sides and his voice low. “You don’t have to carry it around, you know. That guilt of your bloodline.”

She shrugs. Nonchalance - the only way she can protect herself from it when faced so plainly with it. “I simply need to see my daughter, Jonathan. And I need time to grieve.”

That, he understands. Killing one’s Maker - one’s  _ father - _ even after everything, could not have been easy.  _ Is not _ easy. She’s had so long to mourn those mistakes and still it wounds her so much she must flee. He does not blame her even as he hurts for her, and gestures to the door leading out to his balcony.  

“Tell Charlotte I said hello,” he says in farewell. She smiles again, this time in gratitude, and does not waste time in taking her leave. As the door shuts behind her, Pippa and the other Pembroke staff emerge from behind Jonathan, their voices loud in enthusiastic greeting. He receives them with fond hugs and firm handshakes, taking in their healthier complexions and relieved faces. Ackroyd and Tippets are good surgeons,  _ talented  _ surgeons, but Jonathan sees their need for him, and thanks them for keeping his position open for him while he was away and their hard work in keeping Pembroke afloat during London’s recovery. They truly are what this city sorely needed, and when they retreat to rest before the day shifts begin, he wonders how he would have ended the epidemic without them.

“Not very well,” he says aloud, this time to no one but Lisa in the room. Sunrise starts to peek through her window, so he shuffles towards his bed and kicks off his shoes once he collapses on it. In all the ruckus of returning to this place, his hunger hasn’t bothered him once, not even when he was surrounded by the beating hearts of his friends. Now, though, it surfaces, a gnawing at the edge of his existence that will not let him sleep so easily. 

He sates it by biting his own lip, the taste of blood on his tongue enough to curb the beast inside him from seeking a more fulfilling meal. Even though he does not need to kill to eat, he does not want to traumatize a life just to keep his own - so this little part of himself will have to do. It makes it easier to sleep, anyway, and when the sun starts to truly rise and the noise of the city starts to close in around him, his body finally succumbs to his exhaustion. He dreams of nothing, even as the hunger inside him lies unsatisfied just under his skin.

 

***

 

With the end of the epidemic comes the end of the Great Hunt. 

Pulling back on Ekon and Skal hunts is only partly because of the epidemic, however. The police start to flood the boroughs as the sickness infecting them starts to disappear, making it harder for Priwen to operate freely in the streets. His men are restless being cooped up in safe houses during the day, but the cover of night is the only way they can manage to operate without being stopped. Breaking and entering to eradicate Skals and rogue Ekon isn’t exactly high on the priority list of the men in blue - or even remotely on their radar, anyway.

So with begrudging patience, he shifts all work to late night rounds through the boroughs. And while his men fucking hate it the first couple weeks, he knows somewhere down the line it’ll all pay off.

Tonight is the night it does.

“Report’s in from the last rounds,” a voice says from beyond his office doors.

Geoffrey scrubs his eyes and sits up straighter behind his desk. The heavy ache behind them doesn’t go away, but at this point, he doesn’t really expect it to.

“Come in, Arthur,” he calls.

The doors open and Arthur comes in, raindrops sticking to the wool of his coat and his dark hair slicked back out of his weathered face. He carries in his hand a sheaf of papers, and when Geoffrey takes them from him, they’re still warm from the typewriter. 

“Anything out of the ordinary?” Geoffrey asks as he flips through them. From the sparse notes taken under each patrol name, he doesn’t expect an affirmative answer as Arthur sits in one of the chairs in front of his desk. 

“Actually, yeah,” he says. Geoffrey looks up from the papers in his hands, a brow raised. Arthur just shrugs and grins. “That Ekon from a couple weeks ago. The doctor. He was spotted in the West End going towards Pembroke earlier this evening.”

Geoffrey sits up straighter. Their - well, his, mostly - interest in Jonathan Reid extends farther than most Ekon in the area, but to see him so quickly after he disappeared two weeks ago? Where had he been, what had he done, and  _ why? _

“Knew that’d get your attention,” Arthur laughs. 

“He’s only the most powerful young leech around here,” Geoffrey grits out. He slaps the papers down on his desk, careful of the piles of other reports, and rubs his face. “Was Lady Ashbury with him?”

“Yep. Couldn’t get close enough to hear what they was talkin’ about, though.”

Geoffrey waves his hand. The night is nearly over, and rushing Priwen through the streets to confirm sightings isn’t a great idea, anyway. He trusts Arthur’s reports even if he itches to see the man - creature? - that spared him only a short time ago.

He resists that urge and forces himself to relax. If Jonathan has returned, he’s staying for good. He wouldn’t leave Pembroke a second time, that, at least, Geoffrey is sure of.

Arthur’s smirk is still amused when he clears his throat to get Geoffrey’s attention. Geoffrey glares, and Arthur raises his hands in mock surrender.

“Orders, then?” he asks instead of whatever smart remark Geoffrey knows was on those lips. Arthur’s his best captain, one of the oldest members of the Guard since before Geoffrey assumed control of it. He’s been hunting Skals and Ekon since before Geoffrey knew how to wield his own crossbow. 

Still, the knowing look on his old face is enough to annoy him. Geoffrey stands and motions for Arthur to as well, and when they’re both at the doors to his office, he looks at Arthur with as much conviction as he can muster.

“Leave him alone for now,” he says. Arthur’s expression doesn’t change much - only a minute uptick in his grin that Geoffrey hates. “He saved my life when he shouldn’t have, Arthur. Tell the men to leave him alone.”

“You can’t keep an acquaintance with one of them,” Arthur says, suddenly serious. 

Geoffrey can’t stop the scowl from forming on his face. “Just tell them to leave Pembroke - and their resident Ekon - alone. They haven’t hurt anyone, and the last I checked, the epidemic ended the moment they left.”

Arthur raises a brow.

“Final warning,” Geoffrey growls.

Arthur mumbles and shuffles out the door and down the stairs to relay his orders. Geoffrey shuts the door behind him, cutting off the noise of his men as they get angry. They can be that way if they want, but they don’t have to live with the nugget of guilt burning in Geoffrey’s gut at the reality that his life had been spared by a goddamn  _ vampire _ . 

Because he does feel like he owes Doctor Reid. Jonathan had beaten him black and blue, and was, by every right, willing and able to kill him despite being hesitant to do so before. They were enemies now, no matter what Jonathan had been before - their blood demands the other be bled. But that evening…

He collapses in his chair and wonders just where the hell he went wrong. He swore to Reid that the next time they met, it may not be so friendly, but after seeing London heal as a direct response to whatever Reid had done, he doesn’t have it in him to send a party after him. Jonathan hasn’t hurt anyone, and as far as he knows, he hasn’t eaten from anyone, either. 

It’s hard to separate what he knows about Ekon and what he’s starting to see in Jonathan. A leech he may be, but respect deserves respect, and hunting down the one Ekon that managed to end the epidemic doesn’t seem like good luck in Geoffrey’s corner no matter how he spins it. 

Morning comes, and with it comes some downtime. Skals can tolerate the sun, but the Ekon can’t, so Geoffrey assigns skeleton patrols through the docks and West End to mop up any Skal brave enough to wander into the daylight. He manages the chaos in his office for a few hours before retiring, counting on his captains to run the Guard for him during the day. They don’t let him down, and when evening comes, he wakes to reports of fewer Skals in the docks and a more comprehensive list of known Ekon on the London area. 

And Arthur standing at his office door holding a report detailing a sighting of Jonathan in the West End area ear the Ascalon club. Which has gone eerily quiet after the end of the epidemic, their building empty and their senior members nowhere to be seen.

“Fuck,” he groans as he reads it.

“Gonna check it out?” Arthur asks with a note of hope in his voice. 

Geoffrey rubs his face and scrubs his fingers through his hair. He’s doing that a lot, lately. “Yes. Let me eat and change clothes and I’ll be downstairs to lead a small team over.”

Arthur nods and leaves. When the sounds of heavy footsteps down the stairs cease, Geoffrey washes his face in the basin in his room and changes into warmer clothes to battle the drizzle drenching London just outside. He meets Arthur and one other Priwen captain, Rachel, in the hallway downstairs, just before the door leading outside. 

Rachel is a handsome older woman with a young face and plaited dark hair thrown over one shoulder. She joined the Guard to avenge her lover’s death at the hands of an Ekon, though she hasn’t been with them nearly as long as Geoffrey or Arthur. But her gun arm is useful, and the fire in her eyes from her dearly departed Aveline is more passion than any five men of Priwen combined. 

In other words, useful in a fight should Jonathan choose to exercise his left hook on Geoffrey’s face. 

“We getting ourselves a powerful leech?” she quips as Geoffrey sidles up next to her.

“No,” he says flatly. Her peppy expression doesn’t fall - instead, she adjusts her equipment with a smile, glancing over knowingly to Arthur. Geoffrey ignores them both, shoving open the door to the safe house and stepping out into the crisp, wet air of the London evening. 

Arthur and Rachel shut up on the walk to Pembroke, more out of necessity than regard for his patience. Their weapons are hidden, but idle chatter between them would alert anyone should they stray to sensitive topics. Experience keeps them quiet, and while on their walk, they encounter no signs of Skals or Ekon on the thoroughfares out of the borough.

While the West End is quiet in the early evening, Pembroke is a bit more lively. The tents are absent from the plaza, yet Milton, the ambulance driver, still loiters around next to his truck. Milton pays them no mind as they cross the threshold, and neither do any of the nurses when they enter the clean lobby.

“Stay close,” Geoffrey orders. Arthur and Rachel say nothing. He leads them up the stairs, following a familiar path up to Swansea’s office like he did all those weeks ago, searching for a familiar form among the doctors and nurses doing their nightly rounds. 

A niggling thought in the back of his mind tells him he shouldn’t be here bothering these people, but an even deeper part of himself is curious as to what brought Jonathan back here after being gone for so long. He’d escaped Priwen only to come back and try his luck? Even with the Great Hunt called off, Jonathan is a known Ekon, a moving target that every Priwen soldier knows to look for. Returning to the place that is more likely to get himself killed doesn’t seem like the brightest idea even for the dimmest Skal out there.

But Jonathan is no ordinary Ekon, and when Geoffrey’s boots hit the second floor, he couldn’t have been proven more right. 

The double doors leading to the emergency surgery slam open, startling Geoffrey and his Guard back against the wall to stay out of immediate sight. Jonathan and several nurses stumble out of the room, looking worse for wear and covered in blood. Another team of nurses roll out a gurney with a sleeping man on it, seemingly ignoring Geoffrey and his men as they wheel their patient past them and into a clean room on the other side of the wing, their quiet chatter floating behind them as they relay information between each other.

“That was incredibly close,” a nurse near Jonathan says, catching Geoffrey’s attention again. She’s an older woman with dark curly hair poking out of her bonnet and round glasses sitting on her nose. Jonathan looks visibly ill as he nods to her, the front of his scrubs splattered red and his gloved hands slick with blood. Even from a distance away, Geoffrey can see he is struggling to keep his mouth shut.

The nurse doesn’t seem offended. “I will clean up the theatre, Doctor Reid, while you go get changed. I’m sure Mister Hawkins would enjoy seeing you at his bedside when he wakes from the anesthetics.”

Jonathan manages a tight smile and nod. “Thank you, Nurse Branagan. Keep an eye on him should he need my care sooner than I can return.”

The nurse nods her head and returns to the surgery theatre, the doors closing behind her as she begins to clean up. Jonathan works his jaw before swiftly turning on his heel and retreating to a room at the end of the hall, wrenching the door open so hard it creaks and leaving it open as if in invitation for Geoffrey and his men to follow.

Against his better judgement, Geoffrey follows. Rachel and Arthur follow reluctantly, quietly passing by the nurses cleaning the surgery theatre and down the hall towards the open door Jonathan disappeared into. The sound of running water reaches them just before Geoffrey steps inside, and when he crosses the threshold of the doorway, he’s met with a rather normal-looking office with an attached lab off to the left side, where Jonathan is scrubbing his hands and face clean in a steel sink against the wall.

“You don’t have to sneak around,” Reid says without turning around. His voice startles Arthur, but only makes Rachel snort. Geoffrey closes the door behind them and steps further into the room, not bothering to hide his footsteps any longer.

“We got reports that you returned,” he says in answer. “Pretty confident of you, to return so soon after the epidemic has ended.”

Jonathan sighs and shuts off the water. He shrugs out of his bloodstained white coat and tosses it into a wicker hamper before tugging a towel off a hook next to the sink and drying his hands and beard. He raises a disbelieving brow at Geoffrey as the hunter circles the bookcase, holding his hands out to his sides as if to say  _ See? I’m clean, I didn’t eat a drop of that man’s blood like you think I did. _

And the thing is, Geoffrey believes it. Unlike other Ekon that sate their thirst whenever they please, Jonathan’s eyes are clear, his skin pale and his clothes clean. He looks starved, like any leech would when going without, and even if he hadn't Geoffrey doesn’t know if he would really care anymore.

Well, he would. But after experiencing mercy at the hands of a creature so much stronger than him even while starved, he doesn’t know if it would matter if Jonathan had eaten. He’s still a doctor, and despite his opportunity to run, he returned to a place where he and his kind is actively hunted and eradicated just for existing when they didn’t ask to be.

Jonathan doesn’t seem to care there’s three seasoned Priwen vampire hunters standing in his office as he replaces his coat with a clean one and moves to leave. He holds the door open for them, looking at them expectantly, and when Geoffrey makes no move to leave, he sighs.

“I returned because this is where I want to be,” he says. “Lady Ashbury is still a patron, but she will be spending less time here so as not to draw attention to myself. Swansea needs experienced doctors, and my… condition allows me insight into patient’s well being that will save lives. I cannot, in good conscious, let these people die because you think I’m going to eat all of them when they die.”

Rachel’s nose wrinkles and Arthur shifts uneasily from foot to foot. But Geoffrey is not afraid, and as he approaches Jonathan to leave, he looks the Ekon in the eye, searching for sincerity.

And it’s plain there in his face, plain as the day he can no longer exist in. Jonathan does not shy away, staring back at him with clear, eerily white eyes, his jaw set and his hand still holding open the door. Geoffrey nods once, accepting his answer, and steps out, motioning for Rachel and Arthur to follow him.

“I believe you,” Geoffrey says. Rachel and Arthur reluctantly step out into the hallway, hesitating a few feet away as if unable to leave their leader in such close proximity to Jonathan despite their apparent truce. “But if I catch you - or hear of you - abusing your stay here in Pembroke, I will find you. There is nowhere you can run that I can’t follow you to.”

Jonathan nods with a smirk on his lips. “Of course, dear hunter. I expect nothing less.”

Geoffrey snorts. “And remind me to ask you about the epidemic. I’m sure it’s a fascinating story, what you did with that antidote.  _ If _ it’s real.”

“I’ll be sure to give you every sordid detail when we meet next,” Jonathan says, his tone and expression amused.

Geoffrey nods and leads Rachel and Arthur out of Pembroke, careful not to make eye contact with any of the nurses they pass on the way. His Guard are careful to keep their mouths shut until they approach the safehouse, where they both round on him with fury on their faces and anger on their lips.

“You just let him go?” Rachel hisses. Geoffrey stops, looking at her with a carefully blank expression that only makes her angrier. “You realize he could have easily killed any of those people in that hospital? That he could be doing that  _ now?” _

Arthur seems to share her sentiments, but he says nothing. Geoffrey shrugs at them both.

“And yet he hasn’t,” he says easily. “He’s had plenty of opportunity during the epidemic, believe me. He has plenty of opportunity now. If he changes, we will know, but for now, Doctor Jonathan Reid is not a priority target here in London.”

Rachel and Arthur watch with disbelief on their faces as Geoffrey brushes past them and retreats into the safehouse without another word. He may be brushing off real concerns, but he is starting to believe there’s more to Jonathan than just  _ Ekon.  _ The man is only a month old, now, and where month-old Ekon would have left a body count by now, Jonathan has not. There are Ekon here that have much higher carnage left in their wake, making them bigger targets than the vampire doctor that resides in Pembroke.

No, there is certainly more to Jonathan than meets the eye. For now, he will leave it, and search for the answers he seeks to the epidemic here in London. The Great Hunt has ended, and their priorities must shift with its passing. His men will be angry about it, but he feels no remorse as he shifts patrols away from Pembroke and closer to the West End. There, at least, he knows there is a mystery to unravel, one that may or may not need Jonathan’s input further down the line.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit longer than i wanted, but i couldnt find a place to properly cut it in half. sorry, and i hope you enjoy!

When he wakes the next night, it’s to knocking on his office door. 

Jonathan dresses quickly, ignoring the heaviness behind his eyes from being woken so suddenly. The rapping on his door continues for another several seconds before he yanks the door open, mildly annoyed until he recognizes the face smiling broadly back at him. 

“Jonathan!” Doctor Swansea greets. He throws his arms out, as if presenting himself to an audience instead of a tired Ekon. “You weren’t going to tell me you’re back?”

Jonathan shakes off his surprise and embraces Swansea tightly, shaking his hand when they part with a smile. “No, I promise you. You were sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake you, is all. It’s been a long couple weeks, anyway.”

“Of course, of course. Your mysterious disappearance to the Scottish highlands,” Swansea says. He brushes past Jonathan, meandering into the office with good humor in his tone at Jonathan’s questioning expression. “Lady Ashbury doesn’t just talk to you, you know. She was my friend before yours.”

Jonathan snorts. He continues dressing as Swansea sits back in his desk chair, freshening up for his rounds during the night. Swansea waits patiently, still in good humor, but suddenly silent as he watches Jonathan move around his office with an intent in his eyes that makes the Ekon uncomfortable. 

He knows Swansea has questions. Elisabeth would keep nothing from him, not now that she knows what Swansea has done, not now that his hand in the epidemic is much heavier than they thought. And as angry as that makes Jonathan feel, he knows Edgar didn’t do it out of malice, or to pursue his own rewards as a renowned doctor. He knows Edgar did what he did to try and help people in the only way he could, and while it disgusts Jonathan, he understands. 

Swansea watches as he sits on the edge of his bed across from him, watches as he adjusts his sleeves and tries not to stare back. He can hear Edgar’s heartbeat picking up, can smell how nervous and on edge he is - and when he meets the doctor’s eyes, he can see the fear, too. 

“I know what you must be thinking,” Swansea starts. 

“I won’t ask why,” Jonathan cuts in. Edgar’s jaw snaps shut, his heartbeat quickening. Jonathan rushes to continue as Edgar starts to look guilty. “I won’t ask because I know, deep down, you were doing it because you were scared. Scared to lose these good people, and scared to fail, too. Trust me when I say I know how that feels.”

“But I shouldn’t have resorted to Ekon blood, no matter its healing properties,” Edgar argues. His tone is tight and angry, but directed only at himself. “I knew the risks, knew that if it failed, I would have created a monster. No one deserves a fate like that, not even Miss Jones.”

Jonathan grimaces. “I agree. But I didn’t come back to scold you.”

“Then why come back?”

“For you,” Jonathan says honestly. “This hospital, the staff, the people. You may have done wrong, Edgar, but you are not a bad doctor or director.”

Edgar won’t look at him. “You’re too kind,” he says flatly. “Lady Ashbury… had not been as kind as you.”

That, Jonathan is sure. She’d been beyond distraught when he told her what Swansea had done, and even as she promised not to rip him apart, Jonathan knew she would still be angry. To find out one’s blood caused a Disaster if it was consumed could not have been easy to handle on top of discovering it was the source of so much death in a place one loved and cared about - and not once, but  _ twice _ . 

Edgar knew that. Knew as plain as day the risks he was taking with abusing her trust, and still he had done it. He feels bad now, but two weeks ago? He might not have been as charitable. 

Jonathan gets up and pulls a rolling stool across from Edgar, sitting in front of him and steepling his hands between his knees. Edgar doesn’t look at him, but his body tenses, as if recoiling from confrontation or a predator. The latter is probably true, even if Swansea is smarter than that. 

“I want you to listen to me,” Jonathan starts quietly. Edgar barely looks up, so Jonathan continues. 

“I am here to help you,” he says. “I have always been here to help. If I hadn’t been turned, I still would have found a way to help, because these people - especially the poor and downtrodden that relied on Pembroke for care - deserved it. I care about this place, and I won’t abandon it because of something that happened unintentionally, no matter how devastating it turned out to be.”

Edgar finally looks up at him, eyes wet and red-rimmed with barely contained guilt. He sits up and takes Jonathan’s outstretched hand, gripping his fingers tightly and somehow managing a smile. 

“Thank you, dear boy,” he says tightly. “You’ve no idea how much it means to me to have you back.”

“I wouldn’t have left without a goodbye. I’m not  _ that _ much of a monster,” Jonathan says good-naturedly. 

Edgar’s expression turns sheepish. “You know what I meant when I said that.”

“Yes,” Jonathan laughs. He keeps his hand in Edgar’s, more pointedly looking at him now that he has his colleague’s attention. “How have your wounds fared since my absence?”

Edgar’s face pinches. Jonathan can smell he is not injured, no fresh blood pricking at his nose like an especially tasty meal. He doesn’t seem to favor one side of his body or the other, either, and Edgar says as much, albeit sheepishly. 

“I’m glad you were there to find me,” he says. “Priwen is - convincing, when it wants to be.”

“I’m surprised they’d hurt you,” Jonathan says. 

Edgar shrugs as if he hadn’t been beaten nearly to a pulp a month ago at the hands of vampire hunters. “To them, I’m barely a doctor. I’m a  _ leech _ sympathizer - my place in the Brotherhood angered them more than my hand in the Disaster, honestly. It was also a guaranteed way to hurt you, I’m afraid.”

It’s Jonathan’s turn to grimace. “They won’t try again. I believe their leader and I have a truce, so you have nothing to worry about. Their Great Hunt has ended, anyway.”

“That’s a relief.”

Jonathan hums. Seeing Edgar beaten and bruised had angered him much more than he thought it would - enough that he thought when he saw McCullum again, he wouldn’t be able to hold back from sparing him again. But he had, and he’s glad he did. Some allies come disguised, and he has a feeling McCullum is not as black and white as he seems. 

He gets up, pulling Swansea up with him. “Now come,” he says, smiling at the confused quirk of Edgar’s brow. “I have rounds to do and familiar faces to see.”

“Oh! Yes!” Edgar shoots up out of his seat, suddenly filled with an energy that Jonathan sorely missed. He practically runs across Jonathan’s office to lead him out, waving him over like the Pembroke staff would disappear before they can see all of them. “Come! I have a surprise for you.”

Jonathan raises a brow but humors him all the same, following Edgar out past the surgery theatre and down the stairs to the main floor. Nurse Branagan greets them from behind the receptionist counter, a bright smile on her face. Seeing her still here despite everything warms his chest, but as Edgar leads him through the west wing back to the main sick room, he’s given a surprise in a familiar face. 

“I know about her history with you and Lady Ashbury,” Edgar says, careful to keep his voice low. “But she is just too valuable an asset to have. Miss Ashbury understands, as they’ve come to an agreement to not…  _ bother  _ each other, as Nurse Crane continues to work and Lady Ashbury continues her support of Pembroke as our patron.”

Doctor Ackroyd and Strickland are nowhere within earshot, but several patients are, though asleep they may be. Jonathan has a hard time keeping his jaw shut when Dorothy Crane greets them with a small smile, clasping her hands in front of her and giving a small little bow. 

‘’Hello, Doctor Reid,” she says. Her eyes are knowing and amused even as she tries to keep it contained. “It’s good to see you again.”

Jonathan has to force himself not to laugh. “Nurse Crane! Are you the reason this place hasn’t dropped into the Thames during my absence?”

She can barely contain a wide smile as she ducks her chin. “You’re too kind. Doctor Swansea simply needed talented hands, and with the people of Whitechapel taken care of, I was able to return to my duties.”

“With substantial convincing,” Edgar cuts in. “I’ve set up a wing of the hospital for her less fortunate patients to come to. Pembroke cares for all, no matter their citizenship or financial status.”

Swansea is pleased, but Jonathan knows it’s less about bragging rights and more about atoning for his mistake with the Disaster. Nurse Crane had been his goal, and while it was certainly self serving in the beginning, Dorothy was too headstrong a woman to allow herself to be used in such a way. Edgar knows it, and instead of fighting it, he’s practically bent over backwards to keep her from running out the door and taking all her patients with them.

Well, at least she’s helping in a cleaner environment, with ample supplies and all the help she could ever need. Jonathan is proud of them both, and embraces Nurse Crane properly before letting her go to attend patients.

“Thank you again,” she says as she steps away. She is not one to cry, but the look on her face is a near thing that softens Jonathan’s heart.

“Don’t thank me,” he says. “Simply do a good job like I know you will. The nurses of Pembroke are it’s lifeblood - we would not survive without your kind care, Nurse Crane.”

She bows again and takes the praise gracefully, a smile on her face as she moves to comfort one of the last patients in Pembroke still afflicted with influenza symptoms. At least these are true influenza symptoms now, and not those of a human transforming into a Skal before their very eyes. Edgar moves Jonathan away, back towards the reception area, relieved in a way that Jonathan hasn’t seen since he agreed to work the night shifts for him.

Which, by the way…

“I wanted to thank you,” Jonathan says. Swansea turns a questioning brow on him, hands clasped behind his back and looking for all the world like a man who never expects to be thanked. Jonathan continues, quiet so Nurse Pippa doesn’t pay them any mind. “Thank you, Edgar, for providing me shelter here. For accommodating what I am instead of just… killing me.”

Edgar blinks, then shrugs like it’s nothing. “It’s nothing, dear boy. I wouldn’t have left you dead on the streets no matter the state I found you in.”

“Even as a Skal?”

“Even as a Skal,” Edgar laughs. “But please, it’s really nothing. I’m happy to have you back. Now come, we have rounds to do.”

Jonathan follows his lead, checking patients and greeting familiar faces still bedridden at Pembroke. Thankfully, many have left, with only Miss Thelma, Thomas, and Harvey remaining in a sea of strangers coming here for care. He’s happy to see them regardless, and while Thelma still keeps on her charade of being a vampire, it doesn’t bother him like it used to. Besides, she’s harmless, and it seems to keep Thomas entertained through the early evening before he retires. 

It feels good to be back and on routine again. He missed it, even if it saddens him seeing still so many affected by the flu. It gives structure to his life that beats back his instincts, especially after going his entire undead life without eating - or at least, he pretends it works. The night drags on, leaving Jonathan to complete his rounds with the thankful smiles of his staff around him. He’s able to help discharge some patients, but others he feels he needs to keep - they smell too sick to send home. 

He meets up with Edgar again before the end of the night, the impending morning weighing heavy on his back despite the sky only beginning to lighten. Edgar is more peppy than he is, practically vibrating on his feet as they walk up the stairs to their offices. 

“So how was it? Being back?” Edgar blurts, as if he can’t contain the words from escaping. Jonathan laughs and shakes his head, clapping Swansea on the shoulder. 

“It feels good,” he says. “Getting back on the horse - wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be.”

“It’s a shame Miss Thelma still believes herself a vampire,” Edgar laments. 

“She needs care, and we are here to provide it.”

Edgar hums. They approach his office, nurses beginning to follow them up as the morning nurses begin to take over their shifts. Jonathan makes a mental note to meet them all, though it might be difficult to catch them before he retreats to his office. The sky is beginning to lighten, turning a light blue as the sun starts to rise. Edgar notices his wandering gaze and pats his shoulder, smiling at him when Jonathan turns to look at him. 

“Don’t worry, my dear boy,” he says. “You have nothing to worry about here.”

Jonathan nods and smiles, feeling only a little relieved. “Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Edgar.”

“Good morning, Jonathan,” Edgar says teasingly.

“Good morning,” Jonathan laughs, and retreats into his office as the sun starts to peek over the horizon. 

 

***

 

When Rachel was recruited into Priwen, Geoffrey wasn’t sure he would be able to control her.

She had so much anger inside her. Cold, shivering, and covered in her lover’s blood, she had begged for revenge. Cried and screamed about her dear Aveline - she’d been taken from her and all she wanted was the vampires who’d done it burnt to a crisp. How she knew it was  _ vampires _ Geoffrey will never know, but turning her away seemed more irresponsible than taking her under his wing. He had no idea what she would do if he turned her away. Her death, at least right now, would not be on him.

So he trained her. Every night, he would put a crossbow in her hand and teach her to shoot in near darkness, pushing the line of what she was able to see and what she wasn’t. He taught her to see with her ears, to compensate for her shortcomings compared to what she was hunting. Ekon are faster than her, stronger than her,  _ better _ than her, he would say, and that is why they must die. That is why you must learn to shoot in the dark, because while you cannot see them, they can see you, and you cannot allow them a chance to get close. If you do, you’re dead. 

“I won’t let them find me,” she had said one night, with sweat on her brow and her hands calloused from so many nights wielding sword and bow. “There’s nothing I won’t do to find the leech that did this to me.”

He believes her. Her anger had forged within her a will that he couldn’t refuse. Tough like steel and fearless as any Priwen captain should be, her patience honed her skill, and in time there was no one he would rather walk the dark streets with than her.

They never did find the vampire responsible for her beau’s death, even as Geoffrey practically tore apart London himself to find her. She was even angrier for a time because of it, angry and reckless, earning herself a reputation that rivaled Geoffrey’s. Wherever she went, bodies followed, and for a while there was nothing Geoffrey wanted to do than watch her single-handedly eradicate the Ekon and Skal menace in London.

But with age comes wisdom, and Rachel is content to save others her heartbreak even if it means prowling empty boroughs with naught even a glimpse of Ekon activity in days. Her reputation still precedes her, but her caution has earned her bigger kills than simple Skals digging in trash cans.

It has also earned her and eye and ear more tuned to their enemies than most Priwen, so when they start losing leads after the Great Hunt, he brings her out to search with him on a quiet night in the West End, determined to at least keep himself busy so he doesn’t drown in paperwork.

“You got anything over there?” 

Rachel’s voice bouncing around the brick buildings around him pulls him out of his thoughts. The air is cool and wet on his cheeks, damping the stench of trash and waste strewn about these dark alleys, a small mercy for the work they’re doing. It makes Geoffrey frown all the same, all too eager to try his luck somewhere cleaner.

He moves away from the alley, backing out after one last cursory sweep along its dirty walls. Weeks ago, these would have been prime spots to hunt down Skals, but now there’s nothing more than overfilled trash cans and stacked crates to be taken at the end of the week. Which, normally, is a good thing, but with a city as large as London, there’s bound to be little end to them as long as people are still around to fuck up the natural order of things. 

But there’s nothing to find when the source of the epidemic is gone. The thought angers him, and he moves on. 

“No,” Geoffrey calls back. He shoves away from the alley, barely able to contain the frustration in his voice. “Let’s move on.”

Rachel hums and steps out of the opposite alley, equally unsuccessful in finding any traces of Ekon or Skals. They’re getting more scarce as of late, hiding themselves or just not in the area at all. The lack of Skals he understands, but where are all the Ekon? Shouldn’t they be around, hunting now that the residents of London have let down their guard in the wake of the epidemic fading? 

“Should we try the Ascalon building again?” Rachel asks. They fall into step together, a comfortable pace that is not too quick or slow. They turn the corner from Temple onto the main road cutting through the West End, the big red brick building in question coming into sight. Geoffrey frowns, careful not to sound annoyed. 

“We lost some good men attacking them,” he reminds her. He can still see the reports in his mind’s eye, the description of blood and carnage as the Ekon of the Ascalon club had ripped apart his Guard during a midnight attack. Telling their families had been hard - telling the Guard that it hadn’t been a failure of a raid had been harder. “I’m not sending anyone else in there even if it’s abandoned.”

They pass by the Ascalon building, looking up at its dark windows and padlocked front gate with awe and disdain. They hadn’t even been able to retrieve the bodies, and even if he can’t smell their stink from outside, Geoffrey knows if he entered it would nearly make him gag. He makes a mental note to send people in even for the smallest bit of closure as they pass it by - or to burn it to the ground should the task be too great. 

A well-dressed young woman passes them by, her chin dipped down as she hurries ahead of them presumably to go home. She’s well dressed, and pays them no mind as she goes, disappearing around the corner. Geoffrey forgets about her as soon as she’s gone, his attention moving to the rest of the street as they continue to patrol. 

Rachel watches her too, but doesn’t ask any more questions as they stroll down the cobbled street, keeping their pace slow, glancing down alleys and into shop windows as they go. The residents have long since retired, only a couple staying out late to watch films or have a quiet walk themselves. It’s good seeing them out when not too long ago simply walking home from work was a near death sentence. 

“Why him?” Rachel suddenly says, interrupting the quiet evening. 

Geoffrey knows who she’s talking about. He grimaces, suddenly angry, and looks anywhere and everywhere but at her. 

“I know you’re not an idiot, Miss,” he snaps. 

“And you know I don’t like being called Miss,” she snaps back. 

Geoffrey sighs. “Then why the hell are you askin’? You remember our… infiltration of Pembroke, don’t you?”

She shrugs and continues walking, looking this way and that, always attentive. “A leech is a leech, sir. Don’t know why one that’s pretending to be a doctor should be treated any differently.”

He debates not answering her. He has no reason to - he doesn’t need to answer to anyone. His business is his business, whether the entirety of Priwen knows what happened that night or not. 

But Rachel has been nothing but loyal. He trained her from nothing, and she deserves his respect, if nothing else. His lip twitches as he begrudgingly answers, barely able to contain his annoyance at himself. 

“A debt is a debt,” he says. He gestures at nothing, suddenly at a loss for words. She won’t understand the roiling emotion in his gut, the confusion he feels when he thinks back to that night Jonathan spared him. Spared, by a  _ leech? _

Rachel huffs a laugh. “So what? You paid him back by not killing him so far, right? Why should you keep it up now?”

At that moment, an inhuman screech rends the air, a warped, pained thing that cuts itself short only seconds after it starts. The hairs on Geoffrey’s neck stand up and he and Rachel both whip around at the sound, tuned to such things by now and able to pinpoint a direction it came from. An alley they hadn’t gotten to yet, dark in the shadow of the surrounding buildings, not to far from the Ascalon building a block away. 

“This way,” Rachel hisses as trash cans clang further down the alley. Geoffrey leads her through, following his instincts and the noise of someone - or something - struggling. That scream rips through the air again, closer than before, and right as Geoffrey thinks they might be too late, they round the corner right into an Ekon fight. 

A body slams into the stone wall with a crack, nearly hitting them as the Ekon hits the ground and scrambles to get back onto her feet. Geoffrey shoves Rachel back the way they came, scrambling back around the corner to safety as the Ekon launches herself at her attacker, all claws and teeth and hissing screeches. She flings herself only a short distance before she collides with another body, a much larger, male Ekon that throws her off with a barely contained growl before he circles back around the small alley as if he was guarding the other end from her. 

She flails as she hits another trash can, the noise a loud cacophony in the narrow alley, ringing in Geoffrey’s ears. Rachel crouches behind him, making herself as small as possible as the female Ekon rights herself again and charges at the male once more, apparently uncaring at his show of strength. Geoffrey can’t see his face in the dark, can’t make him out beyond his tall frame and long coat, can’t see much detail even as he hisses and battles back the enraged girl with a sword that catches what little light from the overcast sky above. The blade catches on the female’s arm, causing her to howl and flinch away as the fresh wound glistens with dark blood. 

She nearly tries again, but the male Ekon swings the sword again and she dances away, back towards Geoffrey and Rachel hidden behind a pile of rubbish. It gives him an open opportunity, and instead of giving her a chance to escape, Geoffrey lashes out with his own hidden blade and plunges it into her back. The blade sinks between her ribs, ripping a scream from her before she falls, weakened. The male Ekon surges forward then, a flash of silver and shadow before the female’s head is rolling across the flagstones, blood pooling under her body as it falls limp to the ground. 

Only then, when the adrenaline rushing through Geoffrey’s veins begins to subside and the thundering of his heart in his ears fades, does he get a good look at the face of the Ekon who killed one of his own. It’s a familiar face, with an angular nose and clear, light eyes, a face he didn’t expect to see lurking in the shadows fighting his own with a sword as long as his arm. 

“Thank you for your help, McCullum,” Jonathan says, all smooth voice and a small smile. Rachel lights a torch behind them, illuminating his sharp features and pointed teeth. Jonathan blinks against the sudden flame and takes a few cautious steps back, suddenly serious as he continues. “But I will need your assistance again, if you don’t mind. This hungry Ekon attacked a young girl, and I need to get her to Pembroke for treatment and observation.”

When Jonathan moves back to the other end of the alley, Geoffrey spots a petite body collapsed on the ground where Jonathan had been defending moments ago. She’s familiar, wearing fine clothes and long blonde hair spilling from her undone hair pins. The woman from earlier, rushing home - she’d been attacked right in front of them and Geoffrey had been none the wiser. 

He hesitates in his own guilt only for a moment before he helps Jonathan lift her into the Ekon’s arms, careful to hold up her head so her neck doesn’t strain. She’s still breathing, but even in the dark Geoffrey can see the cuts and bruises on her face. 

“I saw her earlier,” he says, honest for reasons he doesn’t know. “She’d been walkin’ home in front of us, then disappeared ‘round the corner.”

Jonathan grimaces. He seems guilty, and for some reason, it makes Geoffrey feel worse. “I was visiting my mother when I heard her scream,” Jonathan says. “She doesn’t appear bitten, but I need my office back at the hospital to be sure. Walk with me?”

Rachel shoots him a disbelieving look as Geoffrey steps out of the way for the Ekon to move past them. She snags his sleeve before he can follow, jerking him back.

“Are you serious?” she hisses. “Visiting his  _ mother? _ Do you believe any of this?”

Jonathan is nearly out of the alley before he hesitates, turning back to look at them as he waits. Geoffrey tugs his sleeve out of Rachel’s grasp and follows him without a word, unable to find a suitable answer for her that would even make sense. 

Because what does he say to a person that’s so like him in past and motive? She’s lost so much at the hands of creatures like Jonathan that he shouldn’t even be entertaining his presence in front of her. Jonathan’s mere existence calls for his death. But he just… can’t.

Not after being shown leniency. Not after doing everything he could to end Jonathan, tricking him, kidnapping Doctor Swansea, hunting him into the ground to only be spared for all that he’d done. Jonathan may be a monster, but the lives in his hands haven’t been more safe and secure than ever before. 

“Just stay on alert,” Geoffrey says. Rachel scoffs but doesn’t argue, following him out of the alley. Jonathan raises a questioning brow, a look of knowing on his face even as he says nothing and leads the way to Pembroke. 

The injured woman thankfully doesn’t wake during the cold, rushed walk to the hospital. Jonathan avoids the front entrance, flitting up to his balcony in a wisp of shadow and displaced air. Geoffrey and Rachel, with their mere human abilities, take the stairs attached to the scaffolding as quietly as possible, aware that Pembroke never truly sleeps, especially since the epidemic. Drawing attention to Priwen’s leader sneaking into the hospital would do more than cast suspicion. 

“Help me check her for bites,” Jonathan says when they enter his office. Geoffrey moves to the other side of the operating table the young woman is lying on, pulling up her delicate sleeves to inspect her wrists. Her skin is clear except for minor scratches and bruising from protecting her face, and when Jonathan checks the obvious places a bite would be, her skin is void of any bite marks. She doesn’t appear to have digested any blood, either, which lifts a little weight off Geoffrey’s shoulders. 

Rachel, however, is not so relieved. Rachel hesitates at the door to the balcony, watching with attentive eyes, the line of her body drawn tight as if waiting for an attack. .

“What were you really doing out there?” she asks, not bothering to hide the suspicion in her voice. Jonathan barely looks up at her, his hands checking the woman’s pulse, her breathing, and tender bruises. Geoffrey turns to glare a Rachel, willing her to shut up, but she merely stares back, challenging him. 

“I told you,” Jonathan says, a note of amusement in his voice. He looks at her fully, catching the tail of Geoffrey’s glare directed at her. He looks between them as he continues. “My mother lives in the West End. She is all I have left - do you expect me to leave her by herself just because I am what I am?”

“That’s awful nice of you, for a leech,” Rachel snorts. 

“Ekon,” Jonathan corrects. “And I didn’t choose this, mind you. I woke up this way.”

“Whatever.”

“That’s enough,” Geoffrey snaps at her. Her jaw audibly clicks shut across the room, drawing Jonathan’s attention away from his patient. He looks at both of them, barely able to hide his amusement. Geoffrey can’t look at him, his heart beginning to race as he stands up to the one woman that he shouldn’t be standing up to. 

He really feels like a traitor, now. She blinks at him in disbelief, staring across the room with a glare that could kill. She stands up straighter, her hand coming down to rest on the pistol holstered on her hip. Jonathan’s eyes fall to it and he straightens as well, backing up as if to flee.

Geoffrey’s throat tightens. “I’ll see you back at the safe house,” he grinds out. It’s as much of a dismissal he’s willing to give - Rachel freezes, staring daggers. “Tell Arthur to start more patrols in the West End.”

Rachel blinks, and for a long time she doesn’t move. Her glare moves to Jonathan behind Geoffrey, and even if he can’t see him, Geoffrey can feel his nervousness. Jonathan fought Priwen nightly when the Great Hunt was still chasing him - he knows how to handle himself in a fight. He moves himself to block Rachel’s view of him anyway, putting his mortal life above Jonathan’s.

That seems to move her. She jerks away from her place against the balcony doorway, glaring one last time before noisily descending the stairs after slamming the door. Geoffrey grimaces and turns to look at Jonathan, an apology in his throat that he’s not willing to let out. 

Jonathan beats him to it, anyway, sheepishly leaning over the unconscious young woman again and checking her over again meticulously. “I’m sorry to make you choose like that. Standing up to them - Priwen must not be happy with you.”

Geoffrey swallows his guilt so it doesn’t escape. Jonathan is a  _ leech _ , a vampire, a blood-sucking beast that deserves nothing more than a death by fire. But even with this contempt lodged in his gut, he can’t help but feel like his perspective has been warped, forcibly shifted by events out of his control. His past is his past, but where he has been using it as an excuse to fuel is anger and hatred, Jonathan has used his own to his advantage: to save lives.

Geoffrey can’t manage being angry at him anymore. He shrugs, reserved to the consequences of sending Rachel away in the way he did. Jonathan smiles, albeit small, and nods in understanding. 

“I’ll keep her here for the night, make sure she doesn’t turn before I let her leave,” Jonathan says, gesturing to the young woman. He leans back over her, cleaning some deeper cuts on the woman’s face, his hands steady as he daubs off blood and dirt with gauze. He doesn’t seem stressed with the blood like he was a couple nights ago when he’d been covered in it, tossing away dirty cotton swabs like it’s nothing. When her cuts are clean, he moves her to his bed, careful to tuck her in without disturbing her. 

“You think she’ll be alright?” Geoffrey asks. “She hasn’t woken up yet.”

“Shock, probably,” Jonathan answers. He doesn’t seem concerned - Geoffrey has to remind himself that Jonathan’s senses are much better than his, and he can probably discern exactly what is wrong with her. He moves to hold open the balcony door for him, smiling like he didn’t have the head of Priwen standing in his office looking like a kicked puppy. 

“You should go smooth things over,” he says. Geoffrey snorts.

“Kickin’ me out already?” 

“No,” Jonathan says at length. “Just… worried.”

“About Priwen?”

“About you.”

Geoffrey blinks in surprise. Jonathan closes the balcony door, venturing closer, his steps cautious as if approaching a hissing animal. Geoffrey lets him, his curiosity getting the better of him as Jonathan stops only feet away. 

It’s only then that he realizes how tall Jonathan is, easily half a head taller than himself. But he doesn’t glare down his nose at him, doesn’t look at him with disdain and disgust like he must be looking at Jonathan. He looks concerned, as he always does, those pale eyes pinning him down with a stare that sees deeper than Geoffrey wants it to.

He wants to break down under that stare. Wants to reveal how guilty he feels being in his position and feeling how he feels, how conflicted his past and his present are lining up together and making him feel this way. His body feels like a mirage under those eyes, and just like that, he knows he needs to escape. 

It’s enough to spook him. He backs up, towards the balcony door, breaking whatever trance Jonathan has over him. The Ekon tries to beckon him back, but unlike he always does, Geoffrey practically books it out the door and down the street. Geoffrey McCullum doesn’t run away - but now, here? He doesn’t see any other alternative. 

He shouldn’t feel this way. Shouldn’t feel guilty for a creature that has the capability to suck him dry after slaughtering him like an animal. Geoffrey swore himself to the service of Priwen, swore to avenge his parents when they were killed right in front of him by his own brother. His whole life has been Priwen - he lives and breathes it. Only now, after breaking himself down and building himself up again for them, is he having second thoughts? 

No. He won’t have it. The next night, he will do something about Jonathan, even if it kills him. The next night, he will not allow this debt to shake his foundation ever again. 

The next night, he will kill Jonathan Reid. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologize for the wait on this! life got in the way, and what i want from this fic has changed drastically since i took a break from it, so bear with me as i attempt to steer it in that direction. all errors are mine - if anyone would like to beta read for me, let me know!

Ever since his turning, it takes a lot to startle Jonathan Reid.

He can hear a mouse breathe across Pembroke. He can smell from a distance whether a patient is suffering from pneumonia or the common cold - he can discern at a glance how many broken bones a dock worker suffers from by the altered blood flow just under their skin. Blood transfusions have never been easier now that he knows exactly where veins lie in a patient’s arm, and even with the gnawing, ancient hunger sitting deep in his chest, it helps having it. He wields that hunger like a weapon, a honed edge with which to fight off infection and disease, injury and happenstance, and for the first time since his return to the war, Jonathan feels in control.

Very little frightens him when he can see, hear, and smell a threat well before it reaches his vicinity. Very little except Geoffrey McCullum.

As the man turns and hurries out of his office, Jonathan wonders if he’d still feel the same had their situations been reversed. He fears McCullum mostly because the man is efficient in killing his kind, but also because he’s seemed to switch sides so easily. They were sworn enemies not because of their own choices, but because of those choices made well before either of them existed, and for Geoffrey to toss them aside so easily after everything -

It frightens him, just a bit. Knowing that a conflicted McCullum probably wasn’t the best of allies. But has very little of those lately, and he decides not to dwell too much on what he can’t control, and instead turns his attention to what he can.

Dorothy awaits him outside his office, wringing her hands as she nearly collides with him in her attempt to knock on his door. He blinks down at her, surprised, and she grimaces, bowing her head.

“I know this is unexpected, but there’s been some complications with our amputee, Miss Jones,” Dorothy says quickly. Jonathan’s focus sharpens, and Dorothy continues, emboldened by his silence. “You may need to operate, Doctor.”

He nods to her. “Let me fetch my coat and I’ll be right down.” 

The woman on his bed is still sleeping soundly, hidden under the covers and the screen he pulled to hide the bed from the rest of the room. He keeps the sound of her gentle heartbeat in his ear as he grabs his lab coat and rushes out after Dorothy, following her down to room at the back of Pembroke where they keep recovering surgery patients. Miss Jones, who had the bottom half of her left leg amputated the week before, is in the bed closest to the door leading to the rest of the east wing, and surrounding her bed is Doctor Ackroyd and Pippa. 

“Blood is settling in the amputated limb. I gave her anesthetics for the pain,” Ackroyd says. His hands are on Miss Jones’ knee, his fingers massaging her swollen knee in an attempt to get blood flowing. After one glance to Miss Jones’ leg, Jonathan swats his hands away, trying to not seem too callous as he does. 

“There’s an open vein that hasn’t clotted,” he says. He can see it under her skin, not quite closed, leaking blood ever so slowly into the bottom of her amputated leg, causing the sutures and limb itself to swell an angry, dark purple. He unlocks the brakes on her bed, and Dorothy and Pippa, understanding him without words, take up Miss Jones’ IV and blood transfusion poles and place their hands on the bed rails. “Let’s wheel her up to the theatre - we need to drain and seal that vein.”

Ackroyd doesn’t argue, and with his help, all four of them get on the surgery elevator and wheel Miss Jones into surgery once on the second floor. The blood collecting in her leg is pungent, a smell that clogs Jonathan’s nose and stirs in him that ever-present desire to feed, but the answering smell of antiseptic and clean surgery tools helps battle it back. Pippa and Dorothy flitting around the theatre help distract him as well, and when they’ve got Miss Jones hooked up properly to fluids and blood again, her mouth and arms covered in a green sheet and her amputated leg cleaned and presented for surgery, the calm focus that comes with an imminent operation dissipates any niggling hunger within him at last. 

His hands are steady when he makes the first incision to cut away the sutures, unlike that first time operating as a vampire in Dorothy’s dispensary. It’s easy enough to pass tools between himself and Dorothy at his side, letting the familiar back-and-forth between them continue as he opens the healing wound.

Even when the sutures come apart and the wound starts to weep blood, it doesn’t bother him. This is dead blood, fetid and dark as it oozes, thick from coagulating under the skin. He moves to the side to allow Ackroyd in to clean up after him, and to allow the wound to drain, his stomach clenching around nothing. 

He lets it drain slowly, and with each passing moment, the hunger within him dissipates further. By the time he’s got the vein sewn shut and the sutures tied in, he couldn’t be further from hunger than he has before, and even with his uncanny ability to sense the warm, rich blood within Miss Jones’ body, he heart beating a steady drumbeat in his ear, he can’t bring himself to thirst for her. He is a doctor first and foremost - he releases her back into Ackroyd’s care, his oath pounding a louder tattoo on the inside of his skull. 

He sheds his gloves and stands from the rolling chair he’d uses during the operation, carefully depositing his gloves and tools on the tray next to the sink to be cleaned and sterilized. Dorothy takes the tray and busies herself rinsing everything off in hot water, but instead of watching her hands, her gaze wanders up to Jonathan’s face.

“Yes?” he says, more as an acknowledgment than a question. 

Dorothy drops her stare. “Nothing, doctor. I apologize.”

He has a feeling he knows what she was looking at - she’d seen his teeth appear at her clinic. While this wasn’t the first (or last) surgery he’d had with her since he turned, it was the only time he’d truly felt out of control. Everything had been so new then, his senses heightened beyond what he was used to, the thrum and beat of blood all around him too cloying like a bee to a flower —

It’d been too much. Even now, it sometimes was, but Miss Jones was not a particularly decadent target even if he had been the type of vampire to take a life. She was too sick, too weak, and as tempting as it was, he’d rather starve.

He thinks about what Dorothy must see and tries not to panic. Had something slipped? Had he been too quick to determine what was wrong with Ackroyd’s patient? Had he been to accurate in draining her blood and finding the vein that was causing problems? 

Had he been exposed? 

He watches as Dorothy darts past him as if he’ll reach out and grab her, her eyes pointedly downcast, the smell of her practically horrified. He scrubs his hands to rid himself of the smell of dying blood and tries not to dwell, his heart pounding an unsteady beat against his ribs, everything inside him telling him to run and hide even as he gathers his coat and begins his rounds.

It was nothing, probably, he tells himself. He focuses on appearing benign - which isn’t all that hard when one means no harm - and pointedly begins his visits in Dorothy’s side of the hospital. She’s making her rounds, too, double checking patients and other nurses, doing what she does best even as her eyes follow him from one bed to the next. Her hands are gentle, but her eyes pierce right through him, and for the first time in a long time Jonathan feels panic rise up the back of his throat.

She brushes past him near the end of the night, carrying bloodsoaked bedclothes that reek of the fresh, nutrient-rich blood of a birth. It nearly knocks him off his feet with the smell, his hand snatching a door jamb to keep himself upright as his mouth grows thick with the scent. Dorothy watches him the whole time, turning to see his reaction, hovering there in the middle of the hallway as if it was normal to do so when there’s work to be done in such a busy hospital. Tippets comes out of the room she came in, his hands and the front of his rubber smock soaked in the same sickly sweet blood, and it takes everything he has not to tear the both of them down as he races back up to his rooms.

Dorothy knows. Or at least, she has some idea, and somehow she’s used the hospital against him to gauge his reactions. He isn’t familiar with Romanian vampire tales, but he feels like he passed a litmus test, somehow, and for the rest of the night, he sits against the far wall with his eyes glued to his door. 

 

***

 

“Everything alright, dear boy?”

Swansea startles him from his thoughts, and if it hadn’t been for the needle he had pressed into a patient’s vein, he was sure he would’ve jumped. Jonathan turns and gives Edgar a tight smile before withdrawing the needle from Miss Jones’ arm, covering the small hole with a cotton ball and taping it down.

“You shouldn’t feel the pain in a couple minutes, miss,” Jonathan says to her. She grips his fingers as a weak smile passes her lips, then lets him go, curling as best she can into her bed clothes to try and get some sleep. 

Jonathan turns to Edgar then, leveling a concerned stare on him. Swansea raises a curious brow in silent askance -  Jonathan takes his arm and wheels him out of Miss Jones’ room, careful not to slam her door in his haste.

“I think Nurse Crane is suspicious of me,” Jonathan hisses. 

Edgar blinks. “Did you do anything to earn her suspicion?” he says after a long beat. 

The unsaid  _ did you kill anyone?  _ floats between them, and Jonathan has to try very hard not to laugh. He’s bitten - or eaten - from no one since he was turned. How could Swansea assume otherwise when he’s proven he can be trusted?

The look he gives Edgar must be enough of an answer, and Edgar grimaces because of it. “Right,” he says. “Well - I would simply ignore it. You’ve done nothing, and will - I assume - continue to do nothing. Simply do your job and there shouldn’t be any issues.”

Their words are hushed, but even in the quiet they echo. Jonathan drags a hand down his face, suddenly tired. “There was a moment, during the epidemic, where I lost control. Nurse Crane was losing a patient on the table and there was so much  _ blood _ , I just - had a hard time keeping myself contained.”

“But did you  _ do _ anything?” Edgar presses. His tone is different, now, searching instead of unconcerned. “If you did, she might have remembered, and I know you performed an emergency surgery yesterday -“

“It was just bloodlust, and I handled it,” Jonathan finishes quickly. “Nothing happened. There was enough going on that the moment passed quickly.”

Swansea eyes him, up and down, from his unnaturally clear eyes to his pale pallor. Jonathan knows the image he strikes, knows he looks and feels a lot more like a predator than he ever did wielding a gun in the military. Try as he might to appear docile and unassuming, he is a supernatural predator, and even unconsciously, humans will pick him out as  _ other.  _ Dorothy is probably honing in on it, and for some reason, it hurts more that it’s her than it would had it been anyone else.

He spared her, after all. Urged her to continue working her underground clinic at the expense of Elisabeth. They were tentative friends and each had equal secrets on the other - though now the scales were beginning to tip in Dorothy’s favor.

Edgar sees this, somehow, and nods his assent. “Alright. I’ll have her switch places with Branagan in the theatre for now, even for emergencies. Nurse Crane is phenomenal help, and maybe she can assist other surgeons instead of you for a while.”

The tension leaves Jonathan all at once. “Thank you, Edgar.”

Edgar’s expression softens. “You’re welcome, dear boy. I won’t let anyone discern your - condition. She’s a good nurse. I’d rather not lose her again.” 

Jonathan nods, and just like that, Edgar leaves him alone in the hallway. He tracks the sound of his footsteps all the way up to his office, picking up Branagan’s and Tippets’ on the second floor as well. Thankfully, Nurse Crane is across the hospital, so he feels safe enough to continue his rounds without interruption. 

When he retires for the night, he finds his room - and bed - empty, his balcony door ajar, and several things knocked over. He closes the balcony door with a sign and resigns himself to finding the young, fresh Ekon the next night with the help of a certain hunter (that is, if the creeping, oppressive presence of the sun doesn’t kill her first). 

 

***

 

“Do you know what an  _ Ekon _ is, young man?”

The man’s voice sounds far away even as he circles closer. Geoffrey has a hard time focusing on him as the room spins, his whole body feeling weighted towards the floor. He nods anyway, nausea jumping up his throat as he does. 

“No you don’t,” the man chuckles. “If you did, we wouldn’t be here.”

Here? Where is here? The room is familiar - his own home, small as it is. But things are knocked over, the dining table and chairs kicked over and dishes lying in shards across the rug his mother bought just last month. A toppled candle lies on the bare floorboards in the small kitchenette, try and failing to burn the wood as wax melts across it, threatening to extinguish the flame entirely. Everything else is a blur, his heart pounding too fast and too loud for him to focus. 

The man steps closer, over a fallen chair and clutter strewn around the room. As he gets closer, Geoffrey notices the blood on his hands, his face, his clothes - and then the smell hits him all at once, like running face-first into a brick wall. He staggers to his knees, unfeeling as glass cuts into his palms as he retches at the stench. The man gives him time, but only enough for him to catch his breath. 

He grabs Geoffrey’s chin in a warm, sticky grip and yanks his head up to face him. “I want you to look,” he says, leaving no room for argument even as Geoffrey tries to squeeze his eyes shut. The man only shakes him, forcing him to see. He steps out of the way, Geoffrey’s skin sticky with blood as he releases him. The man continues, his tone almost reverent. “I want you to  _ see _ .”

Behind where the man had been lie two bodies, a man and a woman, both familiar and unfamiliar. The woman lies in a heap partially hidden behind the sofa, her arms flung above her head and her dark brown hair stained black with blood. Her clothes are torn, like she’d been attacked by an animal, and even from across the room Geoffrey knows she isn’t breathing. 

The man is in a similar state, except his clothes are torn cleanly, as if with a knife. His body is burned in other places, skin blackened and cracked and scabbed. The man’s head is gone altogether, rolled into a corner with a clean cut, his eyes rolled back and his face frozen in slack shock. 

He recognizes those people. The world stops and starts all at once, and when Geoffrey makes a move towards his parents, the man stops him with a hand on his shoulder. 

“No, not now,” he says. He helps Geoffrey to his feet, holding an arm out for the boy to steady himself on wobbly legs. Geoffrey can barely breathe now, his eyes glued to the mangled bodies of his parents in front of him. When had this happened? How?  _ Why? _

Without a word, the man leads him out his own front door and down the gravel drive in the pitch dark, using only the yellow light spilling out of the front windows as a guide around his mother’s meticulously kept garden. The man doesn’t have to tell him to stay put as he returns inside the home; he doesn’t have to instruct Geoffrey not to yell or scream when smoke starts to fill the house and flames start to lick at the sky.

He doesn’t have to do anything as he returns to find Geoffrey still standing there, slack jawed in shock, as his childhood home goes up like a bonfire. The heat is so intense that Geoffrey can feel it wafting across the grass in its own breeze, a massive fire that only grows in the creeping darkness above them. They’re so far out of Dublin’s city limits that not even his closest neighbors would know about the fire until the morning when they all started to pass by going to the city for work. He found that, after watching his home get eaten up in the white-orange glow for several minutes, he didn’t know why this didn’t scare him.

With a throat so dry it clicks when he swallows, he manages to scrape out a “why?”. 

The man - whom up until now has said nothing - clears his own throat. With hands still flaking with blood, he cups Geoffrey’s shoulder as if in consolation and kneels next to him. For the first time since Geoffrey saw him, he notices how pale the man is, how light his blue eyes are and how haunted his expression is. He looks as empty as Geoffrey feels, even as he stands there in emotional turmoil. 

“Let me ask you again,” the man says, voice gentle and low. Geoffrey can barely focus on him as his mother’s garden catches fire, the moisture in the lively plants hissing out of them as the flames eat them up. The man forces him to look at him with a shake of Geoffrey’s shoulder. 

“Do you know what a vampire is? An Ekon?” the man asks. 

The first word is familiar. “Yes,” Geoffrey says, his own voice sounding far away. “Like Dracula, in the stories.”

The man nods. “You’re right. Just like in the stories. But your father, young man, was a real one.”

Geoffrey blinks. He wants to laugh, at the shock of everything finally catching up to him or the absurdity of the revelation, he doesn't know. What does a vampire have to do with this? With his home in flames and his parents gone forever?

“This can’t be real,” Geoffrey manages to say. Everything starts to catch up to him, a rush of heat and memory that his subconscious had tried so hard to block away. His heart starts to pound at a dizzying pace in his chest, his body light and heavy with adrenaline all at once.

The man says nothing as he hurries him to the carriage waiting for them down the gravel street. The horses shift anxiously, the fire startling them, four shifting shadows in the gleaming blaze not two-hundred feet away. The man shoves Geoffrey into the enclosed carriage and slams the door shut, locking it behind him and disappearing from view of the little window. The carriage lurches forward not a moment after that, and despite the panic burning in his veins, Geoffrey manages to calm down.

This isn’t real, he reasons. He just fell asleep and had a terrible nightmare. That’s all. His parents aren’t burning in his childhood home right now - everyone is simply asleep. Vampires aren’t real, just stories, and his father definitely isn’t one.

He drifts in and out of sleep as the carriage takes him God knows where, the beat of the horse’s hooves across the muddy road a comfort to him even in shock. The seat is a comfortable cushion of leather under him, a bench that stretches the width of the carriage, so he lays down and sleeps. For how long, he doesn’t know. For how long, he doesn’t care.

For a long time, it doesn’t matter.

The man that found him hadn’t been a neighbor. Not even a friend or acquaintance - he’d been a total stranger. A stranger, he found out, that hunted the things that preyed in the dark, hunted things that used to be, right up until the night before, children’s tales. 

The man’s name was Carl Eldritch. He’d found Geoffrey’s father after a lengthy time following him, a trail bodies that Geoffrey didn’t know about until he calmed down from the shock. Killing Geoffrey’s father came easy, even after the carnage he’d wrecked on his wife and nearly on his son. Killing him had been like swiping a scyth through tall grass, all ease of motion and the gentle fall of reeds upon each other. Eldritch had always had a way with words, even back then, as fanatic as he’d been. Geoffry is only grateful he spared him the description of the bloody fight that preceded his late father’s death.

After that, his new mentor taught him how to shoot. How to disarm a man twice his size in the dark, how to travel undetected through a den of sleeping dogs before sending him through alley streets and weak vampire covens. Killing the creatures was hard, tricky work, more an art than tested science, and whatever didn’t work, they changed, and by the time Geoffrey turned sixteen, he was well on his way to mastering an art not many could say really existed.

Because a lot of the time, that’s what they were up against: shadows. It provided a good outlet for his anger and hatred, a way to funnel that fear of the night his parents were killed into a honed, sharpened weapon of revenge. Vampires were hard to find back then, harder to track and even harder to kill. They’d been living far longer than he, and with that age came wisdom of deception, and only until be got older did he understand why the world would be a better place without these vile creatures in it.

It was unnatural, what they were, what they represented; what they came to  _ be.  _ They may have been men and women once, but they were no longer the moment they preyed on their fellow human. Sin begets sin, and if McCullum should condemn himself to this anger and torture, he will take as many of these vermin down with him. 

That night in the carriage changed him. Carl Eldritch changed him - moulded him, sculpted him. “You’re a man of clay unto God’s hands,” Carl would say. “Your enemies, of hardened brimstone. Strike them back to hell, and maybe God will see fit to make you into his garden at the end.”

It was religion to Carl. To Geoffrey, it was pure, unadulterated hatred.

His step-brother was next. His head rolled, just like his father’s, and for a long time, the bodies that piled up after him sated the beast under his skin.

Until Reid.

A newborn by Ekon standards, but still a threat all the same. Geoffrey knew Ekon now, knew their strengths when first born and knew what a thirsty, confused leech was capable of. Had seen, countless times, what a young brood could do to so many innocents (their faces, oddly, when he thinks back on them, all strikingly similar to the long, drawn, terrified features of his dead mother.)

A young Ekon was just as powerful, if not more, than a centuries-old vampire. They hadn’t learned their strength just yet, hadn’t learned the boundaries of their own skin. Reid was no different, and yet in the span of only days, had established within himself a tolerance for something Geoffrey wouldn’t understand until he was kneeling on the wooden floor of Pembroke’s attic with Reid’s sword pressed to his neck.

It was an ugly fight, that night. A scrabble similar to the one his mentor had gotten into, all those years ago, all teeth and screeching claws as his father wrestled with Carl to live to kill again. But Reid didn’t have that same animalistic drive within him, not even frozen in burning agony when the orichalcum curtains sprung to life to torture him. He howled and clawed and desperately fought like the scared, cornered demon he was, but in the end, that silver sword laid itself bare against Geoffrey’s neck, cold metal biting his skin, Reid panting and exhausted, skin cracked and charred, those white eyes staring him down as if he could extract all of Geoffrey’s balled up hatred and swallow it down as easily as he could a mouthful of blood. 

Which, in the end, wasn’t easy. Geoffrey was an easy target that Reid didn’t take. He left Geoffrey there, left him to watch as the vampire limped across the attic to go save his city. He chose mercy, like he had so many times before, and it left Geoffrey feeling more empty than he’d been since he watched everything he knew and loved burn up in a holy fire. 

He learned, that night, what an Ekon could truly do. What an Ekon with a strong enough will could force upon the world. Where at first he only saw a beast, a monster, a killer of husbands and daughters and mothers and sons - he now saw a man. Scared, alone, and willing to do his damndest to fix what was, ultimately, the fault of one human. 

If anyone should have died, it should have been Swansea. If anyone should have been caught and tortured and condemned to every Hell Geoffrey could conjure, it’d be Swansea.

Instead, there stood Jonathan. And as he walked away and did what he promised, something akin to fondness grew in Geoffrey’s heart, and he swore to himself to not break that unsaid promise even as Jonathan came to him searching for the antidote. Something changed that day, and try as he might, he doesn’t think he can ever go back to the Geoffrey of yesterday.

 

***

 

So, after hours of wandering after leaving Pembroke, he decides not to really kill Reid. He can’t, despite the panic welling up in him at the mere thought of what Jonathan had said and done. 

But what else is there to do? Reid is what he is, and just for that, he calls for his own extinction. It isn’t his fault, it just is, and Geoffrey should be the first to bring down his sword. He isn’t the Priwen’s godforsaken leader for nothing, and if he can’t even bring himself to kill one leech, then who the fuck is he?

He just…  _ can’t.  _ Too much of himself lies on the burnt, rickety floor of the Pembroke’s attic, now. Too much of who he’d been before that night lies shattered and ashen in that hospital, and there isn’t much of himself that wants to find those parts and find homes for them in his heart again.

Reid had looked too scared, too resigned, to what he’d had to do, and it wasn’t the senseless slaughter Geoffrey expected of him. Reid was a doctor before everything, and now he sees why it was so easy for Reid to shirk his more base instincts and slide into his role at Pembroke like it was custom fit for him.

He truly means no harm, even with the Priwen body count behind him. Geoffrey really can’t begrudge him that, either - it’s not like he gave Jonathan a choice.

So he drags himself back to headquarters, glaring as much as he can to keep up his image of fearless leader to the more perceptive of his Guard. Most ignore him - they’re all too tired this time of night, too exhausted from combing through the West End to give much of anything a second glance - so he passes through the mess and up the stairs past the barracks to his own office easier than he’d thought. Arthur is nowhere to be found, though when he opens his office doors, Rachel is there to meet him on the other side. 

Though it’s less a “meet” and more a “punch”. Only when he finally rights himself and has his handkerchief stuffed up his nose to soak up the blood does Rachel properly look at him, even if, deep down, McCullum knows she’d rather keep pummeling him.

“The fuck you think you’re doing?” she growls. He ignores her for now, getting up from where she knocked him to the floor, carefully holding the handkerchief to his nose. She doesn’t seem slighted by his lack of answer and keeps talking. “You know what they do to people, know what just  _ one _ can do to so many of us. And you spare him? Why?”

He doesn’t really know  _ why _ other than the ache in his chest that tells him why. He doesn’t know how to tell her that somehow, he’s starting to feel like they’re on the wrong side, even after everything that’s been done to them because of vampires. He doesn’t know if he has the strength to tell her that it’s because he’s seen what a wounded, terrified Dr. Reid can do, and it isn’t slaughtering innocents when he’s backed into a corner.

It’s mercy. For once in his goddamn life, he was shown mercy, and it was given to him from a fucking vampire.

Rachel waits, as patiently and as still as she can, even as she vibrates with barely controlled rage across the room. Geoffrey collapses in his desk chair and looks at her - really looks at her - and decides that if this is the hill he dies on, it might as well be with her.

“Sit,” he tells her, not bothering to indicate where. There’s only two other chairs in the room besides his cot behind the desk, and without arguing, she collapses in one of them across from him. He doesn’t bother with asking her to close his office doors - if anyone should hear, fuck it. 

“Do you know what happened that night at Pembroke?” Geoffrey starts. Rachel blinks, then shrugs.

“You came back beat to shit, that’s what happened,” she says. “You came back with  _ claw marks _ in your coat, sir.”

“I came back at all because he let me go,” Geoffrey snaps. There’s no mistaking who he means. “He had me on my knees and he let me go. I’d done everything I could to kill him - he had every reason to cut me down, and he didn’t. I’m sitting in this goddamn chair because a  _ leech _ let me go!”

Rachel stands up suddenly, her chair clattering to the floor behind her with how quickly she pushes it away. “That doesn’t mean every one of them is safe!” she shouts. “That doesn’t mean all the lives they took - doesn’t mean that everyone that’s ever died to a -“ Rachel stops, the hysterical rise in her voice suddenly cutting off as something like pain flashes across her face. He sees vulnerability there, too, but she hides it away as quickly as it comes. 

Geoffrey tries very hard not to raise his voice even as she looks ready to pummel him again. “I know what you’re feeling,” he tells her. “I feel it every day. We all lost someone to them. But he’s different, Rachel. He can help.” 

She shakes her head, disbelieving. The ever-present chatter of the men downstairs has gone silent since their outburst, but Geoffrey can’t bring himself to care. Let them burn him down if they want - he’s not so sure he’d care if they did. 

Rachel picks up her seat and sits back down, shaky and unable to properly look at him for a few long, torturous moments. It’s odd how just these past few minutes feel more treacherous than any vampire hunt he’s been on, but then again, he’s been with Rachel since her new beginning in the Guard. He’s always been there to pick her up, has always trusted her to be by his side, and now he’s asking her to turn her back on everything he’s told her for the same thing that sent her here. 

He’s asking for her betrayal, and in the gleam of her eye when she finally looks up at him, he knows he’s earned it.

“One wrong move,” she warns. Familiar, knowing, with only a hint of a real threat underlying her tone. He nods to her and stands, yanking the kerchief from his nose now that it’s stopped bleeding. 

“C’mon, then,” he says. She stands, quick to obey, a glimmer of her old self again even as doubt colors her fine features. “Someone owes us an explanation as to how, exactly, he ended this fuckin’ mess.”


End file.
